Comments on: Wacky WSJ Solutions to the Housing Mess

By: DavidB

DavidB — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 07:02:43 +0000

I was thinking that too Andy only slightly different. The U.S. government should declare war on these houses. That way they can go around blowing them up legally. Not only would this eliminate excess houses but it would create jobs for military contractors and the defense industry. It would be like killing a whole flock of birds with one stone (:

Or hey, how about this. Declare those houses as fuel. Then the energy companies can go around ‘harvesting’ them and burning them for electricity

LOL!

I better be careful here, someone may take these ideas seriously

By: Ron

Ron — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 02:59:27 +0000

Excellent idea, Andy! Just think, too, of all the newly-created demand for radiation cleanup and mitigation services. We could achieve house pricing nirvana and full employment in one fell swoop!

By: Andy

Andy — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 02:44:28 +0000

Instead of just bulldozing the home, I suggest a nuke. Not only would this effectively “bulldoze” a large number of homes, but the radiation would leave the land uninhabitable. This, in turn, would increase the value of land throughout the country! It would also have the regrettable effect of killing innocents and causing cancer, but we all have to do our part for the state!

By: JimC

JimC — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 02:09:12 +0000

Decades of subsidies to higher education have produced massive malinvesments in human capital.

How about a national campaign to lobotomize millions of overeducated-underemployed workers produced by the federal student loan/state university system? Have Sallie Mae devise least-cost, maximum-bag strategies to mindwipe underutilized art history and sports mangament majors to preserve as much value as possible to remining graduates.

By: Yancey Ward

Yancey Ward — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 05:32:54 +0000

Holman Jenkins is usually a sound thinker.

By: William H. Stoddard

William H. Stoddard — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 19:09:21 +0000

Or how about a Rescue Fund to pay above market prices for – and then destroy – used Big 3 cars and vehicles coming off-lease?

Robert Heinlein got there first; in his science fiction novel The Door into Summer, published in the 1950s, the hero goes from 1970 to 2000 via suspended animation, and gets a job demolishing unwanted automobiles that are being purchased by the government price support program.

By: William H. Stoddard

William H. Stoddard — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 19:07:56 +0000

Or how about a Rescue Fund to pay above market prices for – and then destroy – used Big 3 cars and vehicles coming off-lease?

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 18:24:28 +0000

I read this too and was quite surprised. Here is an editorial page that advertises itself (often) as staunchly free market, and yet Jenkins updates the worst of the New Deal economic schemes for today. (Does he really want to associate himself with “Drop-a-Crop”?) Then our latter day Henry Wallace argues that we should outright nationalize Fannie and Freddie, which is justified because (he says) we can always privatize them later, after things die down and trillions of dollars of coerced capital makes it way to the parties that created this mess. Oh WSJ editorial page, we hardly knew ye!

I’d like to know: Is there any foreclosed property that will not sell at some positive price? The obvious free market solution is to allow properties to sell at whatever price the market will bear, while stuttering Fannie and Freddie and selling off their assets to the highest bidders. Will anyone in the media make this case, or are we stuck with glowing Time exposes on the great suffering servant Paulson, accompanied by Jenkins’ anointed view from the right and Krugman’s from the left? If this reflects the quality of acceptable opinion, there’s little wonder why the the housing bubble occurred and why intelligent people are ditching mainstream news sources.

By: hayesy

hayesy — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 14:15:55 +0000

when a relevant policy would consist of judiciously buying unsalvageable houses and demolishing them

Whaaaat…? Is he being facetious?

By: kurt

kurt — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 11:43:25 +0000

Well bulldozing some GM and Ford plants would actually not be so bad…

By: Brent

Brent — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 11:39:48 +0000

“According to WSJ logic, falling wages is the result of an excessive number of people.

Therefore, the WSJ Solution is to round up these excess people and bulldoze them.”

LOL

By: Niccolo

Niccolo — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 08:02:51 +0000

“According to WSJ logic, falling wages is the result of an excessive number of people.

Therefore, the WSJ Solution is to round up these excess people and bulldoze them.”

As long as they only bulldoze the voters, magnus, I’m fine with that.

Two birds with one stone. Sounds good.

By: magnus

magnus — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 06:59:32 +0000

I invite readers of this blog to propose other examples in which the US government could provide a service to some portion of the market it has wrecked with excess credit creation, subsidies or other counterproductive interventions.

According to WSJ logic, falling wages is the result of an excessive number of people.

Therefore, the WSJ Solution is to round up these excess people and bulldoze them.